Swanson: Star Trek Encourages Bestiality

I kind of envy the folks at Right Wing Watch, who actually get paid to listen to wingnut radio shows every day. Especially Generations Radio with Kevin Swanson and Dave Beuhner, who consistently manage to be even more crazy and delusional than your run of the mill wingnuts. Swanson says the new Star Trek movie is encouraged bestiality — and it’s all the fault of evolution.

Swanson: Do I really want to take my kids to watch a movie that implicates the good guy in the film as mating with the wrong species- but not just one, but two.

Beuhner: Well you know I could understand that Christians would get upset if it was a male of a different species. No actually, I’m not sure that the bestiality and the homosexuality are really all that different.

Swanson: So uh Dave I said to myself we’re not gonna go see that movie. So, you know, you gotta draw the line somewhere don’t ya? I mean, ay yay yay. And how many Christians asked that question? I actually did a survey, I mean I went on to Google and kind of goggled, you know, Christian sites, I mean I try not to put the wrong kind of wording into the Google search, cause if you do that, you can be in a heap of trouble. So I did a little search, turns out there was a Catholic site, had a little forum discussion on the issue. And nobody brought up Leviticus 18 Dave, and of course the whole premise of this is that within an evolutionary construct there is no real problem with speciation and cross-species mating, there’s no problem with that at all, in fact that’s how you evolve, that’s how you get evolution, and so the end result of course is that evolution has no basic problem with bestiality or cross-species mating. Okay? Now some of you are saying that I can’t believe these guys are saying this on this radio program. I can’t believe I’m saying this either. They are going places where no man has gone before. Or should.

I don’t think he knows what “speciation” means. Or much else, for that matter.

Is the partner sentient? If so, it can consent and there isn’t an issue.

raven

Bunch of hypocrites. Talking about perverted bestiality.

Normal people sometimes mate with fundie xians, Tea Partiers, and even Mormons.

It’s not common but it happens.

Often the results are disastrous.

dingojack

And what of the 1-4% of DNA that comes from Neanderthals in certain European and Central Asia populations?

Dingo

——–

Clearly these guys haven’t been paying much attention. Spock was clearly identified as having mixed origins. Vulcan (through his father, Sarek) and Human (through his mother, Amanda Greyson).

Oops perhaps I just outed myself as a geek. 🙂

raven

and of course the whole premise of this is that within an evolutionary construct there is no real problem with speciation and cross-species mating, there’s no problem with that at all, in fact that’s how you evolve, that’s how you get evolution, and so the end result of course is that evolution has no basic problem with bestiality or cross-species mating.

This is just gibberish. He has no idea what the Theory of Evolution is. Pure ignorance.

And evolution says zero, nothing about how we should behave. It’s a biological theory, a description of reality, not a prescriptive ethical system.

Chiroptera

What it sounds like they’re really against is miscegenation.

I’m just sayin’, is all.

Who Knows?

I’m figuring the inter-species mating in Star Trek is really an allegory for inter-racial relationships. That nobody bats an eye at humans and others entering into relationships in the movie, they are saying we shouldn’t bat an eye at inter-racial relationships.

It’s the same for these two. Their complaining of inter-species relationships is really their way of safely proclaiming their dislike of inter-racial relationships in real life.

He’s just mad because they killed off Kirk in the movie with the same name as his radio program.

Michael Heath

Conservative Christians who presume their attributes are that of all Christians, as they two yahoos repeatedly do, seem far effective at defaming Christians than opponents of conservative Christians.

Alverant

@7

I wonder what they thought of DS9 when Worf and Dax got married. Two different species (neither human) played by actors of different races.

On a related topic, weren’t God and Mary different species? Wouldn’t that count for the divine version of beastiality?

Stevarious, Public Health Problem

Clearly these guys haven’t been paying much attention. Spock was clearly identified as having mixed origins. Vulcan (through his father, Sarek) and Human (through his mother, Amanda Greyson).

Oops perhaps I just outed myself as a geek. 🙂

That was just a woman. Everyone knows that women are barely human in the first place (in the eyes of the fundies).

That’s why they only get really outraged at gay sex when it’s two dudes doing it. Women doing bad things is barely worth their contempt – they reserve their true righteous indignation for when a MAN does a bad thing, because MEN are the only people who matter. The only time they ever get really properly outraged at female misbehavior is in the context of the men she has harmed with her actions.

No One

Alverant @ 11

I want to know if there were orgasms involved, for the god or Mary. You’d think that her giving birth to the saviour of the world would at least merit a screaming mimi of an “O”.

slc1

Apparently, these two morons are ignorant of the fact that species are defined by lack of interbreeding. Thus species A is distinct from species B if animals from A can not interbreed with animals from B to produce viable, fertile descendents.

Alverant

@13

Nope, there couldn’t have been. She wasn’t even told about it until after it happened. It was a stealth rape.

Though, thinking about it, Sapir and Whorf are not, as I thought at first sight, a very interracial couple from Startrek the Next Generation. No… no Sapir and Whorf are two Americans, or more properly were two Americans, who came up with the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, and far from being a couple of imaginary miscegeninsts they are so real that the term Whorfian is even in the OED where it resides, I suspect rather nervously, between Whoreson and Whoring!

Nevermind.

raven

For fans of bible trivia, cross kind matings are found in the bible.

Genesis 6:

“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

This is usually taken to mean matings between angels and humans. The offspring were mighty men of old, men of renown, whatever that means.

Thorne

I wonder what they thought of DS9 when Worf and Dax got married. Two different species (neither human) played by actors of different races.

Actually, that would have been three species, since Jadzia was Trill and Dax was a parasitical symbiont.

martinc

… there is no real problem with speciation and cross-species mating, there’s no problem with that at all, in fact that’s how you evolve, that’s how you get evolution …

Apart from their apparent belief that evolution is being touted as some sort of morality system, are these guys seriously saying they think that evolution happens by a species mating with a different species? Something like ‘bats exist because a bird mated with a squirrel, thus creating a kind of squirrel with wings’?

eric

Swanson: Do I really want to take my kids to watch a movie that implicates the good guy in the film as mating with the wrong species- but not just one, but two.

Here’s a novel idea: so don’t go.

Second word of advice: you are not hurting the Star Trek franchise by telling your teen listeners (who may not have seen the movie yet) that Kirk has a threesome with two alien women.

Taz

It’s amusing to me that these guys can be prejudiced against imaginary races.

caseloweraz

Swanson says the new Star Trek movie encourages bestiality…

Well, sure it does, because of all those hot alien women running around right now. A Deltan just walked by my window. She’s evidently taken a vow of celibacy, but there must be others who haven’t…

caseloweraz

Swanson: “I actually did a survey, I mean I went on to Google and kind of goggled, you know…”

Oh, I know. I’m goggling right now, reading this, and my mind is boggling. These people really don’t understand what they’re criticizing.

Pioneering brave new worlds of discrimination! If aliens ever turn up, these guys will already have hashed out precisely in what ways they’re going to be hated.

gridlore

It was established in ST:TNG that a precursor alien species meddled with life all over the Alpha Quadrant to create intelligent species that could interact and breed. So the ability of everyone to mate was established with much handwaving.

I have a feeling Swanson doesn’t even really understand the term species. To tell the truth, it will come as a complete shock to scientists if human beings are able to interbred with an alien species that evolved indepentently on another planet, let along if humans and aliens are similar enough that we could be sexually attracted to each other like they are in scifi movies and TV shows. We could in fact argue that if Vulcans were real and they could interbreed with humans and produce viable offspring, that they technically wouldn’t be a separate species at all.

Moggie

To boldly hate where no man has hated before.

I mean I try not to put the wrong kind of wording into the Google search, cause if you do that, you can be in a heap of trouble.

The offspring were mighty men of old, men of renown, whatever that means.

Probably a residual effect of a pantheistic past and active one-upmanship. Claims of descent from some demi-god were common and claiming that your great great grandfather was badass son of some demi-god couldn’t be disproven.

timberwoof

“It’s a biological theory, a description of reality, not a prescriptive ethical system.”

Well, that’s the problem. Unlike the Bible, it doesn’t tell you how to behave.

/rolleyes

raven

The offspring were mighty men of old, men of renown, whatever that means.

Probably a residual effect of a pantheistic past and active one-upmanship.

Could be.

A lot of stuff in the bible was stolen or borrowed from the Greeks and Zoroastrians.

IIRC, two Greek heroes at least, Hercules and Achilles were half human and half god. They might have gotten themselves written into the bible.

raven

Well, that’s the problem. Unlike the Bible, it doesn’t tell you how to behave.

In practice, the bible doesn’t either.

They just decide what to do and then project it onto the giant Rorschach ink blot called the bible.

And ignore most of what is actually in there as irrelevant. It’s been a long time since we stoned a false prophet to death. If we still did that, Swanson, Beuhner, Robertson, E.W. Jackson, and all the other fundie leaders would have long since disappeared under a pile of rocks.

Doug Little

No actually, I’m not sure that the bestiality and the homosexuality are really all that different.

Bah,

If I woke up tomorrow and all these idiots had been violently removed from the face of the planet I’d probably smile on the inside just a little bit, is that wrong?

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure that advocating against homosexuality and wetting oneself in public are really all that different.

thisisaturingtest

@#31, Moggie-

Well, given that he got the result he was apparently looking for, I took “put the wrong kind of wording into the Google search” to mean “make sure you phrase the question so you only get the answer you want,” and “you can be in a heap of trouble” to mean “you might learn something you don’t want to know.”